They showed up in person in Omaha on September 25th to announce the "changes" to the medical benefit and the elimination of gift time off (extra paid time off) awarded for tenured employees.
If you're still sticking with this place, that's your problem...
Open enrollment has started today, Just as predicted, West has switched over the to the ever worthless high deductable health plans. The downward spiral of mediocrity and winning behaviors continues.
Wait.... so the PTO will go away around 2019 or by the end of this year? Get ready for occurrences to build up.
I find it ironic that John said they are having trouble attracting and retaining talent because of mediocre benefits, then they go on to make the benefits even sh--tier. I look forward to seeing what hatchet job they have planned for the health insurance. High deductable sh-- plans perhaps?
PTO is also going away. The new buckets are Vacation and Sick. This is purely being done from a money perspective from the company. PTO is carried on the books as an expense and Vacation is not. Also this mean when you are let go you will no longer be paid for any hours remaining in the books.
So you do a survey and your employees tell you benefits are #1 concern yet you change them and somehow make them worse. Fix the damn 401k, stop screwing all the employees at even turn.
You have a serious problem where many departments in west are hanging on by literally one person. Pretty soon when some more people leave we will not be able to service any new or existing clients because we will have no one left that knows how the systems work.
They were mentioning PTO earlier today at work. I don't know what's really going on, but from the talks being made, its not sounding too good.
I may be wrong, but the new policies seem to be targeting the old time employees and people who like to take long stretches of time off at a time. This company is looking more and more like First Data every day.
All in all tenured employees are getting hosed.
Does this mean that the company itself will be approving and denying claims? Would this present any sort of conflict of interest? It seems like if the company itself is making this decision, there would be a good reason to deny claims in the name of corporate profit. Also does this mean that the company itself would have the medical history of the employees, which could then be used for purposes other than insurance? This all sounds very dangerous.
Employee share of medical cost is 37 percent versus 35 percent. HMO providers are changing from AON to UHC/Aetna (not sure of other provider). No information on what this will do to per pay period contributions for medical. West will now self-process claims. No talk of HR/Benefits now being HIPAA entities.
Gist of benefits adjustment is "we can't make everyone happy, so we're trying to meet the same standard every other corporation with disgruntled employees and high turnover has."
Which benefits are being improved or increased by the way? So far, I've only seen reductions in benefits, with the exception of the new inclusion of significant others for health insurance purposes.
Also reduced PTO from 160 hours flat to 120 hours and 40 hours of sick leave. Sick leave is not paid on departure from company. PTO was accrued in full on anniversary of employment, now PTO/Sick Leave accrued incrementally on pay period (starting in January). CEO mistakenly thought that leave currently accrued in full for new hires upon hiring. Currently, first year employees accrued 40 hours first day, 32 hours every 3 months thereafter until first anniversary, which is the full 160 hours.
Company acknowledged PTO program was above market, and they are bringing it down to market, while bringing other benefits up to market. Company aspiring to sheer mediocrity of benefits.